Filming at Carnegie Museum for 2014’s The Last
Witch Hunter. All photos by James A. Mahathey
“ We have movie
sets where people
in the neighborhood
make cookies and
take them to the set.

They have block
parties and invite
the cast and crew.

That doesn’t happen
other places.”
The film office works to minimize the impact of filming on neighborhoods.

“Action!” is. They moved into their
home in Virginia Manor last August.

The dogs are still getting used to
the snow, something that almost
kept Keezer from taking this
job in the first place. (“I’m not
going where it snows,” she once
declared. “Famous last words.”)
But it’s clear she’s proud of the
area she now calls home and what
it offers to the productions her
three-person staff brings here.

“There are still people who have
an image in their head that this is a
smoky gray steel town and that is
30 mtl | JULY+AUGUST 2018
what we still look like,” Keezer says.

“That heritage is important, but it
doesn’t really indicate the thriving,
beautiful place that we now have
and that we call home in the region.

And It’s not just the location that
attracts productions, she says; it’s
Pittsburgh’s warm, friendly wel-
come: “We have movie sets where
people in the neighborhood make
cookies and take them to the set.

They have block parties and invite
the cast and crew. That doesn’t
happen other places.”
“In Los Angeles, people come
outside of their house with a leaf
blower and refuse to turn it off until
you pay them money.”



The Pittsburgh Film Office provides employment for more than 3,000 film crew
professionals who live in the region.

Keezer considers her biggest suc-
cess to be the number of local
people hired to work on productions
that come here. More than 3,000
film crew professionals, including
special-effects artists, carpenters,
painters, drivers and makeup art-
ists, live in the area; more shoots
means more job opportunities.

Over the last couple of years, more
than 40 of her Pittsburgh-area crew
members have been able to pur-
chase their own homes, which she
calls a “huge deal,” for folks whose
employment isn’t necessarily steady
or guaranteed.

“We have one of the strongest
crew bases in the country,”
Keezer says. “We’ve been making
movies here since 1914—The Perils
of Pauline … where [the woman] is
on railroad tracks tied up. We really
hit our stride in 1968 when [George
Romero] did Night of the Living
Dead, which is credited with starting
the commercial filmmaking you see
here in southwestern Pennsylvania.”
Pittsburgh Film Office serves as a
one-stop shop for active produc-
tions, and Keezer’s job contains a
lot of moving parts. Daily activities
can range from acquiring filming
permits to picking up office sup-
plies or taking costumes out for dry
cleaning. The office also works to ensure
residents’ lives aren’t upended by
the productions in their neighbor-
hoods. She tells a story of a woman
who called needing parking for her
daughter’s wedding on a day when
all the local spots were taken up by
film-equipment trucks. Keezer got
the crew moved, and the wedding
went on unimpeded.

“There are some glamorous parts,”
she says. “I got to meet Tom Cruise.

I got to meet and have a conversa-
tion with Cate Blanchett. But a lot
more days I’m dealing with how to
get tax credits put aside or how to
close a road or how to make sure a
crew has the parking they need.

“But I have a great job,” she con-
tinues. “My job is different every
day. I’d be bored to death if I was
trapped in an office all of the time.”
That shouldn’t be a problem any
time soon. Not as long as there are
film producers looking for that per-
fect house … or street corner … or
bowling alley.

Keezer enjoyed the gala sponsors party with Mt. Lebanon residents Percy
Jackson, left, a Highmark pharmacy consultant, and Joe Smith, senior vice
president of marketing for Dollar Bank.

LEBOMAG.COM |31 mtl